The royal couple are returning to the UK after a nine-day Diamond Jubilee tour of south-east Asia and the south Pacific, having obtained an injunction in France against the photos being published there.

Kate and William finished their tour in Tuvalu (Picture: AFP/Getty)

French Closer magazine sparked a major outcry in Britain by publishing the photos, taken with a long lens while the duke and duchess sunbathed at a private chateau in the south of France visible from afar from a public road.

The pictures were subsequently published in Ireland and Italy, but the ban on the photos being republished only applies in France, where prosecutors are also investigating potential criminal charges over the unidentified photographer who took them.

A St James’s Palace source said a variety of measures were under consideration to prevent further distribution of the photographs.

‘We are aware of the plans of a Danish magazine to publish further images,’ the source said.